


Paint Me a Saint

by aheadfulloffollies



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Brotp, Gen, No Romance, just vibing yo, luna x draco brotp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-18
Updated: 2020-10-18
Packaged: 2021-03-08 18:59:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27071623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aheadfulloffollies/pseuds/aheadfulloffollies
Summary: Draco commissions Luna to tattoo over his Dark Mark.
Kudos: 33





	Paint Me a Saint

Luna Lovegood didn’t hold grudges.

Miraculously, strangely, perhaps even  _ concerningly,  _ she was one of the only people who looked at Draco and saw something other than a traitor.

It was ironic. Any people he might have considered friends before the war thought him a traitor to the other side. Everyone else had too much against him to consider him anything but. Luna, however, looked at this pale, tired, confused, hurt boy and thought that there was something in there worth helping.

He didn’t know how. He had seen even the darkest trenches of his soul, and there was nothing there that deserved kindness. But because he was selfish and valued his own life and wellbeing maybe a bit more than he should have considering that he knew how horrible he really was, he took it anyway. And then, because there was nothing else he knew how to do, he tried his best to give her a little bit back.

“How’s Ginny?” he tried, voice meek and hesitant as he tried to talk through the pain. A part of him wondered why he’d gone through with this. A bigger part of him knew it would be worth it when it was done.

Luna smiled, not once removing her gaze from Draco’s forearm as she carefully used the strange needle-like muggle device. She’d had to take classes to figure out how it worked, but said it was worth it. He hoped it would be for himself, too. Strange as it was, he wanted the mark that covered what had previously labeled him one of Voldemort’s to not come from magic at all.

People would say he didn’t deserve it. That he should own up to what he did.

He was getting there. He was trying. But he didn’t have to have a mark of evil that he had never wanted to get in the first place on his arm to do that.

“She’s good. Happy, I think. It’s still very hard for her without Fred around, they were close, you know. But she’s trying. That’s what matters, really.”

He could hear the hidden meaning in her words.  _ You’re trying too. You matter. _

He didn’t know if he had the heart to believe them.

Not once looking up from her work, she continued. “I’ve finally convinced her you’re not a horrid Death Eater, you know! She never  _ really _ believed it, but she had to maintain some sort of wariness, after everything, I think. I know you’ve said you’re not ready yet, but whenever you are, she’s decided she’d like to meet!” As if sensing how very important this was, Luna removed the needle from his skin and examined her work for a moment before beaming at him. He made sure that his eyes remained steadily on her, never once glancing towards the tattoo.

Draco felt as if a garden were blooming right before him, all planted and watered and lit by Luna’s words. Someone else wanted to meet him. Someone else might care.

Of course, the shadows came as soon as the sunshine. He could never keep them away for long.

Luna went to work again, and Draco hoped she thought the tears beginning to form in his eyes were from the pain rather than his own thoughts. “It’s… she means it, right?” he asked, treading carefully. He doubted Luna would leave him now, after everything, but maybe she would. His father had. His friends had. It wasn’t as if he could blame her. He was doubting her girlfriend. He tried to tell himself that his doubt was hardly a measure of dislike: he doubted himself plenty, after all.

But then he was abundantly reminded of the fact that he didn’t like himself all that much either. The point, as most things were in this dreadful time of greys and cloudy skies, was null.

However, Luna only laughed at the suggestion, a trickle of a thing he’d grown to enjoy after his original misgivings. “Oh, don’t worry. She might warn about hexing you, but she’s all talk. She knows how much I care about you now and that you’ve changed. The war was hard on us all, and we’re all only kids, really.” She paused. “I really think she’d rather play you on the Quidditch field than hex you. She always pretended to think otherwise for Harry’s sake, but she thinks you’re rather good,” she admitted.

The garden was back. Maybe this time sunshine might stay? It felt foolish to ask.

“Oh,” he said softly, then cleared his throat. “That’s… I would like that. That’s very kind of her.” The words felt choppy on his tongue. He was still learning. After years of being on the receiving end of a well of cruelty, it had been so easy to spill out all his anger on others. But he was trying not to do that anymore.

He was trying. Luna said that was what mattered. She was right, he told himself. She had to be. Otherwise, what was the point?

“I’ll tell her!” Luna seemed genuinely excited by the prospect, and Draco’s heart jumped a little. What a strange sensation, to feel wanted. Like a hand reaching out when he still didn’t know if it was all a ruse to slap him.

“Ron and Harry are going to take some more convincing, I’m afraid,” she said with only equal amounts of cheer. “They’re stubborn as mules. Absolutely ridiculous, we all say, but they’ve got the idea in their heads and now they won’t let go. Either way, I’ll get to them eventually. Ginny’ll help. And Nevillie and Hermione are just about ready to give in, although Hermione is taking the war a little harder than the rest of us. It has to do with her parents, I think. She’s not always up for seeing people, you know.”

He did. Loneliness was a comfortable companion, safe if nothing else. It paired rather well with grief.

“Thank you,” he said quietly. “I’m not sure what I would have done without you.”

“Given into the Wrackspurts, probably,” she said airily.

He laughed. Wrackspurts or not, he would have been lost.

Finally, Luna stepped away from his arm and surveyed her work. Draco was almost scared to look, but Luna stopped him before he could turn anyway. “I have to put a cream on it. You can look after.”

So he waited while she lathered the liquid on his still-burning forearm, then wiped it off with a soft fabric. “There,” she said quietly. “It’s done now.”

He looked.

Flowers. Luna had painted flowers.

When she asked him what he wanted, he’d had only one request: that it wouldn’t look like the mark of Voldemort anymore.

And, of course, she had covered it in the thing Voldemort had probably never even thought of before, something so quintessentially  _ Luna _ that there was no mistaking whose work it was.

What had once been a snake was now the stem of what seemed like a million gorgeous blooms sprouting. She had used only vague touches of colour, but they brought a sort of light to the design that seemed at place. It wasn’t too much or too little. The flowers varied in size and petal shape and other things that certainly had names Draco didn’t know, but each one of them was beautiful. They looked real, like he might reach forth and pry them from his very skin.

The skull remained. It might have deterred him, if it weren’t for the fact that nothing about it looked the same.

Patterned with swirls and bright splashes of colour, hearts and dots and sunshine, it no longer felt like the reminder of death.

No, this was a celebration of life.

When he looked up again, after what felt simultaneously like two seconds and twenty hours, Luna was fidgeting with her hands. “Do you like it?” she asked, and it took a second for Draco to place the nervousness in her voice.

How could she ever have nerves about this? When she had created such beauty?

“Can you teach me?” he asked, before he could think to try and articulate the joy, the happiness, the  _ love _ he felt gazing at this new ink adorning his body.

She looked surprised. “Teach you?”

“To paint,” he said. “Or draw, or sketch, or whatever you want. To… I don’t know, to make something beautiful.” His voice tapered as he said the last bit, realizing how foolish this must be. The Death Eater, the traitor, the disappointment? All he did was break. He probably didn’t even have the capacity to make something like Luna did.

Besides, there had to be a limit to her kindness. This was almost certainly it.

“Draco,” she said, and he braced himself for the let down. But it never came. “I would  _ love _ to teach you. I’ve never taught someone before! I might be horrible at it,” she admitted. “But it would be so fun to ry! Ginny always says I need someone to paint with.”

He looked up again, and-  _ oh _ . She wasn’t faking it. There was no way. The smile on her face was so wide he actually thought she might burst, and her hands were clasped together in joy as she rambled on and on.

Overwhelmed, entirely unsure what to do, and feeling uncomfortably  _ happy _ at this strange sensation, before he knew it he was wrapping her arms around her in an embrace.

“Oh!” This, maybe even more than his question, caught her off guard, but she hugged him back almost immediately.

“Thank you,” he said, not noticing the tears welling in his eyes until he felt their cold sting on his cheek. “I love it, Luna.”

Maybe horrible things could be made beautiful after all.


End file.
